Fellow AC member and enthusiast Scott Clark was my guest the other day. He brought some rare albums, I gather, rare to me, and his battery powered Dodd phono stage. This was the kind of visit we should all have. A long session it was with a break for some supper. The Dodd excelled in the sense of live musicians being present and in their interplay. It was more three dimensional than my own unit and had a special ease about it that was highly engaging. It didn’t quite have the image saturation, the flesh on the bone, of what I am accustomed to but I didn’t miss it. It was more light and delicate and its overall gestalt and had me expanding my consciousness of those of my recordings that we played.

I will be visiting Scott relatively soon. He lives about a 7 hour drive away. Gonna brush up on my Spanish via some audio CD’s on the way. His speakers are the narrow and 7’ tall LS9’s from GR Research with line arrayed ribbons and 6.5” mid-woofers and his room is huge with irregular boundaries behind the listening position and that should be a hellofa contrast to my small and intimate system and setting.

Hope you guys and dolls are doing some, a lot, of this kind of stuff. Another fellow and a co-founder of The Houston Audio Society will be visiting me later this month. That boy has a wonderful sounding system stuck in a tiny room. I should rent him some space and give him a key. Another HAS chum is way off into computer audio and uses a huge air compressor to assist in cleaning his, and my, records. I’m his new best friend cause of my record collection and he makes me discs for allowing him to record my albums to his computer. He uses some kind of software to remove surface noise in the process.

Two of those albums Scott brought were a wonder. Hope I can get em. Ya'll be cool.

Any member who makes the effort to visit me in the boonies (2 hours North of San Francisco on the coast) is welcome. I will be at CES and T.H.E. SHOW in Las Vegas next month and can be found in the SoundLab room at the Tropicana, at least some of the time, if you wish to meet there first. At least come by and say hello!Tom